Death and love

Jean Corr died three years ago at the age of 57 from a respiratory disease, and the sad passing of her mother hits Andrea every day "But you just have to get on," she declares. "You sometimes get a very dark moment where you feel, 'oh my God, how have I lived without her, how have I laughed, how have I done this, how have I done everything?' You feel quite guilty and shocked all over again. There is something that gets me about actually 'going on' - why haven't I fallen apart? She had massive respect for life, loved it, and how indulgent it would be of me to fall apart, but just some days you go: 'God, I'm actually happy and how can I be?'"

For Andrea, it's all about faith. "I truly believe that mammy is in a place of immense love. I feel she struggled to live, it was very hard on her, it was really aggressive what it did to her." Jean was diagnosed in April 1999 and died the following November.

"She wouldn't have wanted to have a half life, and in that way I take huge comfort, and so do we all. Our mother going around debilitated to a certain degree would not suit her, that would have been more cruel than her death. I really believe she is in Heaven, and she is with us all the time in a way too. At other times she's not actually with us, because it's so great there. Why would she want to live down here?" She had a wonderful relationship with her mother. "The love was just incredible. As friends we went on all holidays together, me and my mum and dad."

Last Christmas she talked about how the stress had all melted away now that she was in love, with former Charlotte Church manager Giles Baxendale. Three months later, she is still immensely happy.

"It's the difference between having somebody who is really truly about you and your person and you about them. It's nothing to do with the music, nothing to do with the other things, just very, very real and very wonderful."

The key for Andrea was that the relationship evolved in a natural way "I just hadn't gone out with anybody in such a long time. Before, I would get immediately scared if I thought, there was an idea of boyfriend/ girlfriend. If I felt I was being put together in any way at all, even before the guy was asking me out, I'd be like thinking up how to break it off with him out of fear."

She met Giles through a mutual friend in London, but it developed into something significant over dinner with a group of friends at La Stampa. "We ended up having a ball together, and it was purely on that level, somebody I could be really honest with. Nothing could go on in my head that I wouldn't say to him, because there wasn't that pressure."
She didn't sense the predatory thing either. "I just liked being around him, and he liked being around me. We ended up talking together the whole night, laughing together."

Like at what? "Anything. Life's a farce, there are many things to laugh at as well as ourselves." There is time nowadays for holidays, and she went skiing in Austria for Valentine's weekend. Just after Christmas there was an "amazing" fortnight in Bali.

Andrea thinks that Irish men are both "gorgeous and really respectful". As for any element of drunken lechery, she says she just "wouldn't be around for a drunken lunge". "I feel sorry for guys having to ask girls out, although I don't think it should ever stop, I think it's wonderful. God, if I had to go up and say: 'I like you, will you go out with me?' I'd probably need some drink."